What We’ve Learned Part 1

What We’ve Learned Part 1

What we’ve learned from serving the cleaning service needs of our customers…

Wow. We’ve learned a lot of the years serving our Raleigh residential house cleaning clients.

Below are some of the things that we’ve learned over the last 9 years of serving the residential cleaning needs of hundreds of customers. We do make mistakes and are far from perfect, but the lessons below help us operate more or less smoothly.

Tell customers when you’ve broken something. One of our hard and fast rules that if we break something, we want the customer to learn about it from us, not find it on their own. The reality is, cleaning about 600 houses per month and moving things while we dust and clean, there are going to me some dropped items, broken items. It is part of doing business. We instruct out teams to let the customer know (verbally if they are there and with a note if they are not) that we have broken an item, what it is, how we did it, and that the office will call to arrange compensation. Don’t let customers find broken items (that we broke). Address it up front;

When an existing customer needs an emergency clean, jump through hoops to get it done for them. We often hear “My mother in law just let us know she is visiting this weekend, can we get out clean moved up to this week instead of next!” Even if we are full, we will often try to accommodate by adjusting schedules where possible or working late to satisfy them. If you help get someone out of a bind, especially a good, longstanding customer, it will be remembered. If there is any way to do it, then do it.

When there is a complaint, deal with resolving it immediately, and ensure we keep addressing it in the future. For example, a customer may want extra attention to baseboards, and we’ve left some dust, we do several things: put this note in the work order so future teams will see this is important. Talk with Team who didn’t do this well, ask why, go over why it is important, discuss it thoroughly, and make sure that they know the task was unsatisfactory, and address its importance. Also, note this in the employee records. By taking all these steps, we can ensure it won’t happen again. It is much better to keep a customer for years instead of months and attention to resolving any complaints is a key step to keep them happy.

Have the same teams/people clean the customers house. While we can’t do this all the time due to scheduling fixes and sick days, we strive for having the same team clean 80% of the time. This leads to better quality and continuity. Plus, customers just like the same people coming in to their house for each clean. They enjoy the familiarity. For that matter, so do employees. By striving for the same teams in the same homes, you will retain customers longer.